to prepare the opera for rehearsals by deleting sections of the libretto as well as some of the music for the finale, with the result that Beatrice's final aria had to be borrowed from Bianca e Fernando. (Bellini's sketches of a former duet between Beatrice and Agnese were realized by Vittorio Gui for a series of revivals from the late 1960s.) In order to create more time for Bellini to finish, the La Fenice impresario Lanari padded the programme with older works or revivals, but that allowed only eight days for Beatrice before the scheduled end of the season. Not surprisingly, the audience having waited so long for the new work, greeted the opening night on 16 March with little enthusiasm, their rejection demonstrated by cries of Norma! upon hearing Pasta's first aria, Ma la sola, oimė! son io, / che penar per lui si veda? ("Am I the only one to whom he has brought grief?"), thinking that they heard echoes of the music from the earlier opera. Their indifference was magnified after reading Romani's plea for "the reader's full indulgence" which appeared in the libretto with the suggestion that its faults were not his. But at the following two performances there were large crowds. For Bellini, his opera "was not unworthy of her sisters". The break with Romani – and their reunion There then began what Herbert Weinstock describes, in over twelve pages of text which include the long letters written by both sides in the dispute, "the journalistic storm over Beatrice di Tenda [which evolved] into the bitterest, most convoluted, and—at our distance from it—most amusing polemic in the annals of early nineteenth-century Italian opera". A back-and-forth series of letters in the Venetian daily, the Gazzetta privilegiata di Venezia began, the first of which complained about the delay in the production. This was followed by a torrent of anti-Beatrice letters, then a pro-Bellini reply, which laid the blame on Romani. This provoked a response from Romani himself, presenting his case against Bellini based largely on the composer's inability to decide on a subject and then finding his melodramma "touched up in a thousand ways", in order to make it acceptable to "the Milords of the Thames [who] await him", a sarcastic reference to Bellini's planned trip to London to stage the opera there. A further "cannonade" from Romani (says Weinstock) appeared in Milan's L'Eco in April. However,